Lord Howarth of Newport: My Lords, I think we can all agree that the Chancellor had to maintain a—[Inaudible]—stance and drive towards a—[Inaudible]—configuration of the public finances, while improving—[Inaudible]—and encouraging productivity and investment in a green economy, though we can argue about how—[Inaudible]—his measures may be in achieving those ends.
I suggest that the Chancellor’s analysis of the malaise of our economy fails to identify some crucial features. He is emphatic about the need to improve growth—an objective of my party as well. We should start by asking what sort of growth we want. The noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley, just now reflected on various forms of growth, not all of them welcome. The Chancellor said—[Inaudible]—sustainable and healthy growth, but what does that mean? He seems, in the conventional view of the Treasury, to envisage economic success in terms of increases in GDP. Should not the primary objective of economic policy be rather to grow the well-being of every member of our society, especially those who are worst off?
GDP, as a measure of the economy, takes no account of inequality and ignores the basic human needs of security, dignity and respect. The Chancellor alluded vaguely to the need to fund good public services. I am glad that he wants to help children in care and households with pre-payment meters, but he offered nothing in the Budget to give confidence to the great majority that they and their families will be cared for, that they will be helped to adapt their skills and make a good life, that their elderly parents will be supported in their frailty, and that their children will be well educated and in due course decently housed at an affordable cost. The Budget was not devised within a vision of a society that is equitable, humane and in harmony with nature.
The Chancellor preened himself, a little desperately, on achieving a
“slightly lower overall tax burden”
than previously forecast
“for the rest of the Parliament”,—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/23; col. 836.]
although that will not have gratified his party, frantic for him to lower personal taxation before the election. They might reflect—and this is a consideration also from the noble Lord, Lord Bridges—that economic growth was stronger in the post-war decades, when top rates of personal tax were high and a mixed economy was the orthodoxy, than in the following decades, when policymakers put their faith in the market and sought to roll back the state with privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy.
There is no evidence that low personal taxes inspire people who have advantages to work harder or lead to improvements in efficiency. Low rates of tax on high incomes make it rational to provide grotesquely large remuneration and prioritise shareholder value over investment. They have caused talent to gravitate excessively to finance, narrowing the capacity of the economy and contributing to the dereliction of post-industrial areas. Natural justice requires that the winners from globalisation are taxed so as to compensate its losers. Instead, the proceeds of growth have been almost entirely extracted by the rich.
Mr Hunt’s claim that since 2010 the Government have cut inequality can be based only on the most selective statistics. The Chancellor’s policy on personal taxes is for the rich to be able to accumulate bigger pensions and thereby pay less inheritance tax while many more people on lower incomes are to be dragged into the income tax net and see their disposable income fall. He could at least have introduced tax relief on pension contributions at a flat rate, but he chose not to do so. The Budget will exacerbate inequality and national demoralisation.
Communities blighted by the forces of economic change—new technology and globalisation—need not only generous social security for individuals and their families but substantial resources for place-based regeneration, funded by taxpayers who have benefited from globalisation and administered as far as possible by local communities themselves. I am pleased, therefore, that the Chancellor has seen the need to empower elected local leaders to
“fund and deliver solutions to their own challenges.”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/23; col. 838.]
I hope he will move faster than he seems minded to do to extend this freedom beyond the West Midlands and Greater Manchester mayoralties. However, I suspect that his vision of 12 investment zones as “potential Canary Wharfs” will be depressing rather than inspiring for the people who live in those places. Are they to be subjected to the abandonment of properly considered urban planning and the destruction of biodiversity? Growth should not be at the expense of quality of life and life itself.
It is good that the Chancellor will bring forward measures to tackle the promoters of tax avoidance schemes, but his concern seems only to stanch the haemorrhage of tax revenue. He gave no hint that he understands the importance of cleaning up the nexus between the very wealthy and government. When people read reports of the elaborate arrangements, devised by accountants and lawyers, for rich people to avoid even such taxes as they are expected to pay, and when they read about the lobbying of government by big business and the funding of politics by the rich, they conclude that government and politics are corrupt and, to coin a phrase, a conspiracy against the public.
Resentment is intensified when political rhetoric stigmatises the poor as failures and morally defective. This Chancellor is more delicate in his language than his predecessor, George Osborne, but in the Budget yesterday he said the sanctions regime for social security   claimants will be applied “more rigorously”. A society in which feelings of injustice are thus incubated will, to say the least, not be optimally productive. This is dangerous for our democracy as well as our economy. Anger, unhappily, will issue in scapegoating of politicians certainly but also of immigrants, who are perceived wrongly to depress wages, steal jobs and have a free ride on public services. If the Chancellor wants more construction workers and childminders to come here from abroad, he had better educate the Home Secretary as to why this is in the interests of our economy and try to persuade her to tone down her language about migrants.
We have no option but to embrace technological change, but we should be aware that it is not certain that we will grow faster or be happier if we become a science superpower—the Prime Minister’s dream. Historically, the technological innovations of electricity and the internal combustion engine indeed engendered high growth in an era when the size of the state and its commitment to public services was also growing hugely. The technological innovations of the digital era, also the era of the cult of the small state and globalisation, have been accompanied by weak growth of productivity, stagnation of wages and widening inequality, as well as the pathologies associated with social media. If to be a science and technology superpower means to accelerate the application of artificial intelligence, as the Chancellor proposes, then we shall need more than ever a protective state. We have to see past the circumstances of today’s tight labour market to recognise that very many livelihoods are at risk from artificial intelligence.
Following technological innovations in the 18th century that heralded the Industrial Revolution in Britain, real wages halved and then stagnated for 50 years. Great technological disruptions may benefit capital but they immiserate labour that is displaced and rejected. In this context, it is perverse for the Chancellor to continue to tax labour at a high rate through national insurance while favouring capital through generous investment allowances. Destruction takes a very long time to become creative and there is no certainty that it will do so. In such an era we need government that willingly embraces responsibility for the well-being of the vulnerable.
I now look forward very much indeed to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb: My Lords, I have a huge apology to make to the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, because I was not here for her maiden speech; I am very sorry about that, but I will of course read it in Hansard and congratulate her next week.
Before I start on the Budget—because that was probably the nicest thing I am going to say this afternoon—I would like to give the Leader of the House a couple of tips. First, a speaking limit in this debate might have been a good idea. Secondly, if the heating is going to be switched off before we meet, could blankets or hot water bottles be supplied? After my speech, I am going to go and get my coat, just like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke.
Noble Lords can imagine what I think about the Budget. Quite honestly, this Government do not have a clue about any sort of greening of the economy. It is ludicrous for them to talk about all the green things that they are doing when they are absolutely not green.
The IMF has forecast that the UK will be the worst-performing large advanced economy this year, but Britain’s decline, relative to those of other rich nations, is rooted in problems both old and new.  Clearly, this Government have done their absolute best to trash our economy. We have had 13 years of economic mismanagement. We used to say, “Well, the thing about the Tories is that, however awful they are, at least they can manage money and know how to run an economy”. We cannot say that any more; in fact, the opposite is true. They have run our economy into the ground. I understand that Covid did not help but, in a crisis, you look to your best talents—clearly, the Tory Government did not have any. That is why we are in this situation at the moment.
Billions of pounds have been lost in bad decisions and lost investment. Millions more people are in poverty. Children and parents are going hungry. People are living in cold homes, with pensioners dying from hypothermia—and this Government have the cheek to put in their Budget the 1%, or whatever it is, for pension pots. Who is that for? It is for millionaires; it is not for people who are starving and cannot manage to pay their heating bills. It really is time that this Government understood the exact impact of what they are doing.
Today’s Budget announcement falls far short of the strong climate action needed. I have to repeat to the Government that, as Greens often say, green growth is an oxymoron. The minute you grow anything, you have to degrow in a different area. Green growth is possible but not if you do not cut somewhere else. Every time we grow the economy, we take a bite out of the planet’s resources—and it is a bite that will not grow back. Whatever this Government do, they seem to be moving in a way that is even more damaging to climate change.
Speaking to the Dutch Parliament recently, Professor Jason Hickel—his book, Less is More, should be compulsory reading for this Government—debunked the concept of green growth, saying:
“Decarbonization with growth is like trying to run down an escalator that is accelerating upwards”—
you are likely to fall on your face. People have to understand that using a tonne of fossil carbon and then trying to replace it with a tonne of new trees does not work. It is not a fair exchange; it is nowhere near compensation for the fossil fuel used. Carbon offsets will not save us from the worst of climate change; they are just something that make people feel good. They are absolutely ineffective and we have got to stop.
The simplest way to solve the problem of climate change is stopping the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The Government have not even understood that; they are still mad about digging up coal and using oil. It is incredible that after decades of Greens like me telling the Government how to mitigate climate change, they still do not get it—plus, of course, this Chancellor continued the regressive freeze on fuel duty. That shows no grasp of the situation we are in; neither does his tweaking of the pension pot while not paying nurses and doctors. It is unbelievable stupidity. I know that there is now a deal, thank goodness, but why was there not one weeks ago? Why did we have to go through this pain? Why did patients have to go through it? I simply do not understand.
By the way, nuclear is not green. I cannot tell you how many times I have said that in this Chamber.  Nuclear power is not green. It is filthy, it is very expensive and it is going to cause us problems in future. It is not green and it is not sustainable.
Our Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, said in the other place that the Chancellor could have announced a
“wealth tax on the 1% richest people”,
which
“could raise up to £70 billion”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/23; col. 864.]
and fund cheaper public transport, more home insulation and public sector pay rises for millions. He did not do that. He put in a measure that will benefit millionaires.
If you are worried about jobs, why not upscale green initiatives—green growth, if you like? For example, clean, green, abundant and affordable renewables are so much quicker, easier and cheaper than nuclear; with onshore and offshore wind, tidal and solar, we could do it and do it quickly. We must remember that growth is not necessarily prosperity; people seem to conflate the two but it is not true.
Green Alliance was very quick off the mark to give us a rapid review of the Spring Budget. It shows that the Chancellor has taken absolutely no steps on the path to a green economy. While the fiscal situation might be improving, the UK’s economy is still forecast to shrink this year, with falling living standards for households being a primary reason. It is not falling living standards for people such as us—we can manage; it is falling living standards for people who cannot even manage at the moment.
There is one tiny thing the Chancellor did right: alcohol duty will rise in line with RPI from 1 August. That might reduce alcohol harm in the UK while raising perhaps crucial public funds, but it is really so minor as to be almost not worth mentioning.
A Green Party economist, Molly Scott Cato, former MEP, said that a green Chancellor would ensure major investment in a green economy. That means meaningful investment in affordable renewables and a nationwide insulation programme. We have had so many complaints about Insulate Britain, the campaign group that caused so much fuss. In fact, we should have said, “You’re absolutely right: we need to insulate Britain. It is cheap, it is fast and it helps people”. This Government got hung up on the group’s campaigns, and now we are seeing the Public Order Bill, and so on, which are trying to stop people protesting again. Just those two measures—insulation and renewables—would help tackle greenhouse gas emissions and mean that people could afford to be warm in their homes. Is that not a kinder thing to do than to cut living standards?
Other measures would include fair pay for public sector workers and 35 hours a week of free childcare for all. I support the Government’s idea of capping bus fares, although it will not be in every place. The Greens would put a £1 single fare on all bus routes in England.
It really is time this Government were gone, before they cause yet more damage to us, our society and the reputation of the UK, and before they damage the planet any more than they have already.